Google taking over the dictionary?

At a public meeting of the Dictionary Society of North America held in Chicago, Erin McKean, Editor-in-Chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary 2e told the audience “We’re Googletudinous.”  The occasion was an "open microphone" session where audience members were invited to propose “new words” that they’d like to see in the dictionary.  Googletudinous was runner-up to prize-winning word newsrotica for the best “new coinage.” Newsrotica, meaning “news that shouldn’t be news, but everybody watches compulsively anyway” won its coiner Dave Epstein a tee-shirt donated by podictionary, the podcast for word lovers.  Pleased with his win Epstein pointed out the play on neurotic so fitting for a word that describes compulsive activity.  Also winners were the words hangry, meaning “a tendency to anger brought on by hunger” winning a dictionary as the best new word overall, and wordly meaning “of or relating to words”, winning the book Predicting New Words.  These “new words” were accepted because they are not part of most people’s vocabulary, even though they can be found in the fattest dictionaries.  The “new coinages” had never been documented before.  A panel of lexicographers explained that for a word to be put into the dictionary it had to be a useful word, and as such a word that was used.  And yet it was none of the winners that the Dictionary Society host found useful enough for her closing remarks, but  the runner up Googletudinous with its self-evident meaning of “ripe for Googling.”  


The NEW WORD OPEN MIC contest was recorded and is available for listening at www.podictionary.com